Humanitarian actors and practices

We were pleased to welcome anthropologist Julien Bonhomme, author of the book The Sex Thieves: The Anthropology of a Rumor for a conference and debate on Tuesday, May 9th, 2023 at 18:30 (Paris time) at MSF (34 avenue Jean Jaurès, 75019 Paris).

Conference and debate, June 28th, 2022, from 18:30 to 20:30 (Paris time), MSF (salle du premier, 14-34 avenue Jean Jaurès, 75019 Paris). The conference was livestreamed and translated simultaneously to English.

A screening of the film "Agir contre l’exclusion" followed by a debate, April 7th, 2022, from 18:30 to 20:30, MSF and online. The debate was translated simultaneously into sign language and English.

We were very happy to welcome two authors of the book: sociologist (CNRS) and Crash scientific committee member Claudine Vidal, and Jean-Hervé Bradol, doctor, former President of the French section of MSF and current director studies at the Crash, for the launching event of the newly-published book “Violences extrêmes. Enquêter, secourir, juger République démocratique du Congo, Rwanda, Syrie” (Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, Paris 2021). The event was hosted by Rony Brauman.

Médecins Sans Frontières celebrated its 50th anniversary. On this occasion and in the framework of the International Humanitarian Studies Association (IHSA) conference, the Crash organized a Round Table on the history of the organization, the myths surrounding it, and its recent evolution.

Combining historical research and ethnographic investigations, the Africanist historian Joël Glasman plunges us into the factory of the homo humanitarianus, the average individual, on the basis of which "needs" and aid projects today are assessed. This conversation took place on December 10th 2020, during a conference-debate at Crash.

Eleanor Davey, historian of ideas and humanitarianism, senior lecturer at the Humanitarian and Conflict Research Institute, University of Manchester, discusses her book, Idealism Beyond Borders. The French Revolutionary Left and the Rise of Humanitarianism, 1954-1988, devoted to the intellectual history of sans-frontiérisme and Third-Worldism, in France, from the Algerian war to the early years of Médecins Sans Frontières.

The reasons why we are accepted, tolerated or sometimes rejected in the contexts where we work are often obscure. Caroline Abu-Sada and her team of sociology student shed some light on these issues.